Monday, October 1, 2007

Weekend Blog Dump + Weigh In

ThursdayI did my freetrainers.com routine. I changed my bicep curls to standing on one leg curls. It was uneventful.

FridayI doubted my ability to run the entire distance again today. It seems like big accomplishments are closely followed by set backs. So when I went out today I told myself I'd just do what I could, fully expecting all the while to hit the wall before the 1 mile mark. The 1 mile mark came and went though, the wall was nowhere in sight. I felt myself in the groove again and it's weird how easy it all feels once I'm there. It almost feels like it would be more work to walk. A tough thing to describe here. Anyway I finished in 28:56. With how fast the run felt I was expecting a better time, but time really doesn't matter. I just hope I can keep finding my groove when I'm out running.

SaturdayThe plan was to do my mile run and then round out the 30 minutes with walking just to get a light day in before my long run tomorrow. Things did not go as planned for once. Instead my wife and kids and I and another family drove north 20 minutes to the High Rollaways. It is a spot not many people know about, and I can't even find a link about it right now. It's a place that you can drive to and you end up in a small parking lot about 700 feet or so away from a cliff that borders the Manistee river about 500 feet below. It is entirely wooded and there is a nicely groomed 1/4 mile stretch of trail pretty close to the edge of cliff. The draw though is the veiw out, you can see for several miles with a 180 degree span. In the fall it's pretty breathtaking. Unfortunately for this trip the colors weren't quite popping yet for northern Michigan standards. The nicely groomed trail meets up with an adequate trail on both ends that goes several miles in both directions. Our plan was to hike south on the adequate trail for a half hour or so then turn around come back and have a picnic at the High Rollaways. We brought our stroller for our 5 month old, which turned out to be not as bad as an idea as it may sound. I pushed it most of the way and though the tree roots tried to stop me, they failed miserably. I don't know how far we went on the trail but we were out there for a good hour. The picnic went well and a good time was had by all. When we got home I intended to follow through with the plan, but then all of sudden I didn't. I caught the couch bug instead and soon found myself asleep to the sound of a tuckered out family and college football in the background.

SundayI ran my long run a little after 10:00 am. The plan was for it to be 54 minutes long. I looked at several routes and thought I had one planned that was 3.156 miles. I figured based upon past long runs that the increase in distance would match the increase in time. Today's route had me going east and then going back west and by my house before I turned east again to get home. Because of this I was able to leave water at the end of the driveway so I had some water at what I thought was the 1.3 mile mark. The run went really well. I liked the route a lot. Almost a third of it is on a dirt road and that is definitely softer than the tar and chip over asphalt I'm on for the rest. I found my groove very early and ended up finishing in 53:27 and my feet never gave me even a whisper of trouble. I was pretty happy with this until I went online to map the distance to put it into my runningahead log. That's when I found out it was actually 3 miles, not 3.156. I know this might seem like quibbling, but I liked the idea that I had completed a 5k distance. No matter though, next Sunday will be an hour and that will for sure be longer than a 5k.

Monday MorningI weighed 328.6 lbs this morning. That is a loss of 7.6 lbs this week, bringing my total weight loss to 38.4 lbs. I think my scale might be manic depressive. It's digital, but it gets stuck on certain numbers some times. I will weigh the exact same weight for 3 days straight and then it will just drop me 6 lbs. I feel thinner this morning and the affirmation from the scale feels good (even if it is a little bi-polar).

The Future

About Me

I have always been overweight. Back in 1998-99 I lost 80 lbs on no-carb. I was still overweight. I honestly believe the only reason it worked at all was because I was in college and had multiple dinning halls worth of choices to keep me in salad and meat. Once I graduated that year it took about 2 years for all the weight to come back. I never have stuck to much in the way of exercising. At 28 years old a sedentary lifestyle with a taste for high calorie food has gotten me to 367 lbs. Now it's time to see how far running and a vegetable induced portion controlled way of eating can get me.